5 common customer service mistakes in SaaS and how to avoid them?

Customer service can make or break a brand. Creating a corporate culture around building superior relationships with clients can even surpass the fact that your pricing may be higher than a competitor. According to Start-up Strategist Jorge Barba, the customer experience is among has significant influence on how clients perceive your brand as a whole, because “customers remember how they are treated as much as if you are an innovative company.”

If your subscription business isn’t investing in customer service, you could fail to build the brand advocates that are critical to growth. We’ve outlined 5 of the most-common and devastating customer service mistakes in the Saas industry and how you can avoid them:

1. Not Owning the Customer Relationship

In the subscription business industry, there can be an abrupt shift in how customers are treated after they have been converted by the sales team. Exceptional sales representatives are experts at owning relationships with prospects, and maintaining contact until they have been brought on-board.

In a niche that relies entirely on recurring revenue, building a corporate culture where customer service own relationships with customers is crucial. SaaS expert Mikael Blaisdell points out retaining customers is crucial to recurring revenue, and failing to take control is all too common.

2. Going Incommunicado

United Airlines is often held up as an example of a brand who consistently fails at providing customer service, and surveys of travelers support the fact that they could often improve their approach to passengers. One of their main problems is the fact that they’re not always communicative with passengers when flights are delayed.

Your customers understand that problems happen, but they don’t have patience for being kept in the dark during a lapse in uptime. Let them know you’re aware too, and that your developers are working actively to fix the issue.

3. Automating When Personalization Matters

You’re tech-savvy, and probably have customer service emails ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. However, automated messages aren’t always the right approach to customer queries and complaints. If you’ve made a mistake and a customer reached out to let you know, take a personalized approach and offer an apology that isn’t copied-and-pasted.

4. Not Listening to Customer Feedback

You might tell your customers that you’re open to feedback on your products and services, and you should certainly take the time to respond personally to comments on social media.

However, are you truly listening and implementing customer feedback about your subscription business? When your recurring revenue is crucial to customer success, making your customers feel that their feedback truly matters should play a strong role in your customer service plan.

5. Not Practicing Early Intervention

Too many subscription business companies employ a reactive, rather than proactive, approach to customer service. If you’re company isn’t using behavioral segmentation data to track customer engagement, think again, it could be a powerful retention tool. Utilizing your customer service team to reach out to disengaged SaaS customers can significantly improve relationships.

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